Students take the mic at the pop up newsroom.

We're marking the occasion with something a little different: a podcast within a podcast. At our pop up newsroom at the Central Library, we handed the mic over to Mason Li, Jerry Li and Eric Wen, three Grade 9 students from Westmount Charter School.

They visited newsroom with their class in February, and we turned the students loose in the library to research and report on an issue that mattered to them.

Mason, Jerry and Eric chose racism. Then they created the Li-Wen Podcast on the spot, covering not just racism in Canada, but also diversity in media and the current state of journalism.

Canada is portrayed as a multicultural society that welcomes everybody — but we wanted to dive a little deeper.

Eric Wen, Grade 9

Part 2 is a follow-up to our last episode, Sprawlcast Live. I sit down with Donna Clarke, an organizer with the Renters Action Movement, to discuss rental housing in Calgary, stereotypes and the barriers facing vulnerable people in our community.

On the one-year anniversary of Sprawlcast, I want to extend special thanks to CJSW—and especially Marta Ligocki, Braden Alexander and Mike Tod—for collaborating and making Sprawlcast possible.